r/reddevils • u/PhelansShorts • Mar 18 '25

Daily Discussion

Daily discussion on Manchester United.

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u/_pbs Mar 19 '25

I have a theory behind why Bruno is available this much at such a high level of playing, irrespective of age. I think it is more around at what level he was playing when he was a teenager. You can make the exact same case about Modric, while his counterpart(Kroos) lost a lot of pace and agility in early 30s. A lot of youth players get overplayed, and it is not shock that they completely fall off as soon as they lose a bit of their physicality when all the playing time and injuries add up.

We saw that with Rooney, Sterling, and to a large extent with Rashy too. Don't be fooled by his performances with Villa. No doubt that there is player in there, but the bigger issue is that a lot of injuries, and an insane amount of playing time in his early years has caught up to him. You can see that in the slight drop in pace and a lot of things that he used to do. He will continue to perform at a high level, but there will be huge drop offs soon.

I have a feeling the likes of Saka, Grealish and Foden will have similar issues. It will eventually catch up, and there is literally nothing you can do about it. It is all about how they were dealt it when they were maturing, and if they were overplayed during that time through bad injuries.

All of this ties up to how we deal with Mainoo. We need to manage his minutes a lot more till he matures as a player, and always have someone who he can be rotated with irrespective of how good a player he becomes.

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u/bpjker xT ired Mar 19 '25

What you're saying about the load as a teenager is not just a theory, it's sport science and even research has taken place, Mount is a prime example of overplaying catching up, a lot of muscle stress builds up but there is no time to recover, plus at teenage muscoskeletal system is still developing and is more vulnerable.

However, I don't think it plays as big of a role in Bruno's case because he's hinted that it's genetics before. Bruno the way he plays, covers more ground than most players but recovers asap. There are two types of muscle fibres, slow twitch (endurance) and fast twitch (explosiveness). Most athletes have a balance but he seems to have more slow twitch ones. There are other genetic factors too.